How Amazing are our Brains?

I had this lucid dream last night where I was hooked up to equipment that allowed me to create dreams in real time. Redundant, I know.

The dream I was creating was about a spaceship flying into a field of millions and millions of missiles, trying to dodge through them. Each missile was a different color, to keep track of which bounty hunter shot the missile.

Here's what amazes me. I could actually see each and every one of these missiles. They were all moving like a swarm of bees, and I could focus on thousands of them at a time. They were all different shapes, different sizes, and different colors. I remember thinking at the time, "How the hell am I even able to watch all these flying around at once, let alone be generating it all realtime and aware that I am doing it?"

Sitting here now, I can barely even visualize five different shaped, different colored objects at one time. I can barely hold them in my minds eye while they are not moving. There is no way I could imagine millions of them all on different paths, all moving fast, all at once. Its not like this is something I see everyday, so I can just recall the memory somehow. I actually had to generate it with my conscious willpower in the dream.

You're obviously not a fan of The Terminator movies. Robot takeovers and all.

But I agree. I'm no computer scientist, but from my limited understanding, computer processing right now is just a huge bloated mess. Needs a rebuilding from the ground up. I remember in college hearing about chiral molecules being developed to create a new binary system. That would be a ton faster and more reliable than silicon chips.

I think if we had the capacity to understand our thought processes well enough to recreate them in a synthetic way, we would be beyond learning from them. In other words, we would need technology more powerful than our brains to be able to fully analyze and understand our brains in the first place.

I'm just surprised there is not more money and research being poured into figuring these things out.

You would probablly like to research what I like to call "Greek Technology". Its the way people completed complex tasks before there were computers, calculators, even pencils and paper.

A good example is the "Method of Loci" or "Memory Mansion". It is still currently used by people in memory competitions. You tap into your brains natural ability to navigate physical spaces and not get lost. You can remember a long sequence of locations if they are connected. Like rooms in a house. Apparently there is no limit to how many places your brain can remember if you have actually walked through them.

Use this as a filing system for information that has no rhyme or reason. If I show you a deck of cards one at a time, and tell you to repeat to me the order the cards came up in, it would be near impossible. Use the method of loci, and it becomes very simple. You already know the 52 cards. You just don't know the order. What you do, is have a preset house with 52 rooms in it. Imagine placing each card in a room, and then just walk through the rooms in your mind.

There were countless systems like this that were taught to people before we became reliant on technology. Read up on Alchemy symbols and Astrology in relation to this. People used the movements of the starts and planets, and the interactions of materials as benchmarks that would never change, and always be available to everyone. These things can be experienced firsthand, and then complex systems of symbolism can be applied to them as a way of organizing information in your brain.

Similar to the memory mansion. Once you have a firm understanding of how the stars and planets move in relation to eachother, you can use the heavens as your mansion.

I may be giving away too many of the secret genius tricks. The illuminati is probably going to come kill me

In response to the original post: You'd be surprised at how much your brain can do while you're awake when your other sense are shut down (manually or automatically). Know anything about float tanks? http://youtube.com/watch?v=YEjTXX2rHgA

When you're asleep your mind is free from the physical world, and can focus most of its power to simulation.

Well there is quite a difference between reality and your inside mind. A dream is a creation of your mind during a psychotropic release...or whateve word you would like to use, so the things created by your mind would in theory be very easy to completely see, because you created them. The more amazing thing is not that you could see them, but create them.

Could you make one for my Wii so Super Smash Brothers will quit with the slowdown?

lol, qft.

Actually, though, that would probably be a bad idea. Our brains process information A LOT slower than electronic computers... they just have the ability to process a whole lot of information at the same time.